Koreans: Addicted to Coffee or Cafes?

I don’t know if an average tourist spending a 1 or 2-weeks vacation in Seoul or other major cities such as Busan and Daegu would realise this but these cities are flooded with cafes. I began realising this after a few weeks into my stay in Seoul and there are cafes EVERYWHERE in the cities. Be it large or small, commercially or privately owned, simply or beautifully decorated… you can find an abundance of cafes with different concepts and ambience.

Well, I actually began noticing the cafes when I stumbled across a Charlie Brown cafe in Sillim, the area where I stayed. People following my facebook closely might remember the photos of a Charlie Brown cafe I uploaded while I was in Korea. The cafe was too cute that I told bf we have to go there for a date even if we don’t feel like drinking coffee. :p

Comparing the number of cafes I’ve seen in all the countries I had visited, Korea has got to be the country with the most. With random cafes along the streets, I find myself hanging out with friends in the cafes very often.

There are certainly many reasons as to why so many cafes line the streets of the large cities in Korea. A reason is probably to get away from the freezing weather outside, or having a good break from the pressure of the competitive society, but I believe that a bigger reason for Koreans to visit cafes so often is because of socialising. Hanging out, chatting, meetings, and even studying. I get this idea from their concept of DRINKING, yes beer and soju. Koreans are good at drinking, they go drinking very often because they think that chatting over a meal and sharing drinks would make them feel closer. It’s their way of socialising. I suppose that it is the same as going to a cafe. Some Koreans don’t drink or can’t drink, so perhaps a better way to get close with say, a colleague or a date is to go to a cafe!

What a name to give to a cafe. Exorcist Coffee.
If I remember correctly, the drink in the right photo is an orange peel tea. The taste was really strong, both very sweet and sour. I’m not an orange lover so it wasn’t much to my liking. I only picked that tea because it was the only tea left and I didn’t feel like drinking coffee.

I’ve seen a good amount of cafes with stocked-up bookshelves as shown in the photo above. There is the risk of people stealing them but it would great if cafes in Singapore could have free books for anyone to read!

AND THEN, there is the evolution of cafes in Korea: Dog and Cat cafes. These are where dogs and cats roam freely around the cafe while you enjoy a cup of latte. Dog-owners tend to bring their own dogs to these cafes and let their dogs socialise as well! So it’s a place for both human and pets to socialise! It is also definitely a great place for dog/cat lovers, just like me, to hang out and play with the animals.

I have actually been to the dog and cat cafes in Seoul and Daegu, and I’m sure Busan has one or two of such cafes. For people who are interested, the best dog cafe I’ve been to is called Bau House located at HongDae station in Seoul. As compared to the other dog cafes, for one it has great seats as can be seen below, and they sell treats for the dogs so it’s easy to attract them. In the other cafes, it’s difficult to play with the dogs when you don’t have any treats for them. As for cat cafes, they are not as active as dogs and they’re not as noisy as dogs, so it’s a little more quiet, for the more reserved people? ^^

Anyway, I have realised one special drink that could be found in almost every cafes in Korea but not that commonly seen in Australia and Singapore (only countries I’m familiar with). That’s the GREEN TEA LATTE! They can most definitely be found in large commercialised cafes in Korea but most of the privately-owned cafes do sell them as well. Indeed, cafes in Korea have a wider range of drinks available, besides the normal drinks that contain caffeine.

I personally love going to cafes even though I’m not a fan of coffee. I just love the idea of enjoying a cup of drink in a relaxed environment and having a good chat with friends. ^^

FT Island, once again!

Guess who’s going to see them for the 4th time?! That’s right, I’m going to FT Island’s concert next month on my 2nd night in Korea! I just bought the tickets off the ticket site: Interpark, which thankfully has English version for international fans! That means a Korean ID is not needed for buying tickets! :)

This time, I’m going to attend a concert in their home country! AND bf (I’ve decided not to address him as “A” here because it can be kind of confusing at times) will be coming along as well. Haha, I don’t know how crazy I will become when I see FTI with bf beside me. o.o;;; I tend to be FREAKING crazy and let my hair loose in concerts… Not sure if I want him to see that. X)

The last time I saw FTI was in Thailand during their Asia Tour Concert, Feb 2010! Can’t believe I’m going to see them again. This is too surreal.

 FT Island's song, "Like Birds" from their recent album, Memory in FT Island.

Life in Daegu

I decided to blog more about the cultural experiences that I had while in Korea, especially my stay in A’s home.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos of his home or its surroundings. I guess I was too overwhelmed with EVERYTHING; the fact that I was meeting his parents, the fact that his house IS actually located in the mountains (he told me before but I thought he was kidding), the fact that I’d be intruding his home for a week, the fact that everyone was speaking satoori, the fact that… oh I shall continue this later.

So in an effort to allow people, who has been asking me how his house/area looks like, to imagine how his place is like… I found some photos on the internet which look kind of similar to his home area.

His house is located at quite a mountainous area like this:
 

Unlike the houses in this photo, his house is located relatively deeper in the mountains (can’t be seen from the main roads to the city) and if I’m not wrong it sits on the middle of a mountain. There are other houses around where some of his relatives reside and neighbours around pretty much know each other. They know each other so well, they just let themselves into each other’s house anytime they want!

Although we do see that in dramas but it still freaked me out the first time someone came in without knocking/pressing the bell (if they actually DO have one). They do not have to lock their doors and cars! I’m actually kind of sceptical about not locking the doors/cars (well maybe it’s my culture or sth), I don’t feel safe, PLUS it was in a rural area which made me feel even more UNsafe (something about the wilderness…). But everyone’s part of the “village” so they trust each other, in a way as neighbours they also look out for each other. Even so, sometimes I wonder what if a criminal (not part of the village) appears out of the blue?? He may be a psychotic killer, or a thief??? ^^;;; Just scaring myself with these scary thoughts.

But I felt pretty safe during my stay there. Probably because it’s his house and he was around so there was nothing to worry about.

People from Daegu, Busan and the Kyeong-Sang province speak similar satoori…  Click! What is a satoori?

Luckily A’s family do not speak heavy satoori which would be very different from the standard Korean. But it was still difficult to understand what they were saying, especially when my Korean is still not good, it makes things even worse! ^^;;;;;; Although I can’t really understand most of the satoori, once I know what it meant, I found it quite funny when I compared satoori to the standard Korean I’m learning. Hehe. I learnt a little satoori from A and I can’t stop laughing whenever I spoke them myself!! It’s just so funny and interesting!

Staying at A’s home and “exploring” the surrounding areas were eye-opening for me. I even got to ride on a tractor while going to his family’s farm!! So exciting, just like a mini-roller coaster ride! His family owns a cow farm selling milk and, boy there are sooooooo many cows there! It would be nice milking a cow with one’s hands, experiencing a REAL farmer’s life but they don’t do that anymore because it would dirty the milk.

The good thing was, A’s house is modernized so the rooms, kitchen, toilets are similar to Singapore. So even though his house was located in a rural area, it was modernized inside. Come to think of it, it’s pretty nice to live in a nice house among nature! The air is fresher there and the surroundings itself encourages a healthy lifestyle… climbing mountains and taking a stroll around the village. As long as one has a car there, the city is just 30mins away.

Korea, A and I

I’m finally blogging about my one-month stay in Korea. The dream I didn’t want to wake up from and the bitter-sweet experiences I had during my stay.

Straight to the point- I was able to tour the main cities of Korea thanks to A’s meticulous guidance. Seoul, Busan and his hometown, Daegu are the three biggest cities in S. Korea. We also went to Kyeong-Ju, a city in Kyeongsang province to see the first sunrise of 2011, and Cheon-An, where his school was located at.

Out of the 3 major cities we visited, I enjoyed Busan the most. I think it’s such a lovely city, just like Seoul but less crowded. The haeundae beach is beautiful~! It was kind of warm at the beach so I enjoyed walking there with him and watching the Busan’s gal-mae-gi (seagulls) flying around. hehe.. And the most important thing was, it wasn’t as cold as Seoul and Daegu! For all major seafood lovers, Busan is THE place to be. They have everything and anything… it’s either weird looking and tasting seafood which I’ve never seen before or the way they eat certain seafood which is very different from Singapore style.

@ Hae-un-dae beach – Love it there! But I may not say the same for summer…

Seoul is no doubt the most buzzling city out of the three with all the happening events there!! The capital city is not only a metropolitan city but it also preserved significant historical sites. Shopping there is endless as well… the famous dong-dae-mun and myeong-dong are every girl’s heaven!! Insa-dong, where tradition is heavily preserved, offers many sweet treats to tourists and locals! I enjoyed my time there, drinking traditional tea and savouring on traditional treats!! Hehe.

The only negative point about Seoul is that it’s THE COLDEST CITY OUT OF THE 3 CITIES. When we were there, the lowest temperature was -18dc!!  Freeeezing cold… Sooo cold we couldn’t really enjoy walking outside. That day we even went up to Namsan tower and couldn’t really stay outside for long when we went to hang our “love lock” there! My hands turned cold so fast, it freaking hurt and was a little swollen- even with gloves on. Luckily I had a heat pack with me or else I would return finger-less!! LOL.

Our love lock- He bought it.. lol. We wrote our message behind.

Thanks to my “good” luck, after taking a few photos at Namsan, my camera battery died. So I couldn’t take much quality photos while I was up there! I took some with my phone camera which obviously sucks in quality. I have yet to upload those photos yet because it’s so troublesome to. :P

In Seoul, we also went to other places like the Han River, 63 Building, Hanok village (same place I went to in 2009; he thought the one I went to was located at another area), Seoul’s City hall (outdoor skating rink), Coex Aquarium (one of the places RUNNING MAN went to in their recent episode), Kyungbok Palace and Cheong-gae-cheon~

Daegu is the third largest city and it’s also A’s hometown. As compared to the other 2 larger cities, Daegu does things in moderation of course, just like the amusement park we went to. It’s not as large as Seoul’s amusement parks but at least it still has Daegu Tower where we could ice-skate inside! While I was in Korea, we went ice-skating twice (the other time was outdoor skating in Seoul). Even if I’d ice-skated a few times in Singapore before,  it’s understandable that I can’t skate right? To me, able to skate= able to move with skates on the ice! But to A, able to skate= able to glide around like Kim Yuna (so it seems to me). :P He was able to skate fast and quite stably but he still said he CAN’T skate. –_-; For me, I was like walking on the ice because it has been so long since I last skated and I always walk on ice when I skated in the past. Haha. I needed time to practice!!!

our 2nd ice-skating date at Daegu tower~

We also went to Cheon-An, another city located at Chungcheong province, to visit his school for a day. That day, it was snowing!!! It snowed a looooot and from the photos you could see snow covering everything. I was so excited seeing the snow… but A was passive about it because of his bad experiences with snow (especially during his army days).

A’s uni, looking beautiful covered in snow..

When we returned to Seoul from Cheon-An, I got really sick the next day. It was from the inflammation of my throat (from SG) which worsened due to the cold weather- I had a high fever, headache and flu. It was so bad I had to stay in bed the whole day!!!! T-T Just like in dramas (hehe), A took care of me the whole day… he went out to buy medicine and porridge while I lied in bed. I don’t know if I was sick or the porridge tasted really horrible. When I’m really sick, I would lose my appetite almost completely and anything would taste horrible to me. Furthermore, I’m not a fan of porridges so I had such a terrible time eating the porridge but A said I had to eat no matter what so that I would have strength and energy to fight the sickness. In the end he had to feed me… haha… But honestly the porridge was sooo dry which is the kind of porridge I hate the most. Watery porridge is still acceptable but dried out porridge is just bleeeah!! >:P

There were a few other times when I needed to eat medicine. One time was when I got hurt while playing baseball at one of the arcades in Daegu. Yeah they have this baseball area with real baseball bats and balls, and if anyone wants to play, they have to enter a cubicle and insert coins. Once coins are inserted, the baseball balls will be shot out towards the player. I was such an amateur I had my hands held so high on the bat that the ball actually hit my thumb!!! –_-;;; DAMN HELLISH FREAKING PAIN!!! It was like having a drawer slammed onto your thumb but 100times more painful!! The injured area was at the base of my thumb nail. It bled a lot from the tear of my skin. But I think I was really lucky not to have the ball slam into my thumb bones (joint) or elsewhere!! Or else I cannot imagine what could have happen to my poor thumb!!! Lucky me.

I actually have other sicknesses but I’m not going to type everything here because it’s getting too damn long. Haha~

To end it off, although I was sick a few times, I had a greeeeeat time, especially spending each and every precious day with him…